2 hr 5 min
Corona Cast 8: Live Therapy with Dan. How Could You Treat an “Existential Depression” in the Midst of a Pandemic? Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
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- Mental Health
Corona Cast 8: Live Therapy with Dan. How Could You Treat an “Existential Depression” in the Midst of a Pandemic?
Today David and Dr. Jill Levitt feature live work with Dan, a licensed clinical social worker who’s been struggling with an “existential depression” for 15 years, but it has been recently exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The session took place in one hour and forty minutes on a Tuesday evening on July 23rd, 2020, in David’s and Jill’s Tuesday training group at Stanford.
Live personal work is one form of training that is vital to professional growth and learning, so it is extremely beneficial for the person who volunteers for the role of “patient.” At the same time, the live work also provides superb learning for those observing the process, since you can see what is really happening during a T.E.A.M. therapy session. Hopefully, you will learn a great deal as you listen to Dan’s live and uncensored therapy session.
Jill and I feel very grateful to Dan for allowing us to publish such an intensely painful and personal experience. You will likely feel grateful to Dan as well!
All live therapy sessions tend to be dramatic and illuminating from a variety of perspectives. Today’s session is unique in that the A = Assessment of Resistance was outstanding and unique. The remarkable changes that occurred would not have been possible without outstanding E = Empathy and A = Assessment of Resistance, which were stellar.
However, the M = Methods portion of the session was also strong, especially in the use of humor and role-reversals during the Externalization of Voices to blast Dan’s Negative Thoughts out of the water. That portion of the session confirmed by the three basic tenants of cognitive therapy:
You FEEL the way you THINK. All of your negative feelings are caused by your thoughts in the here-and-now, and not by the actual events in your life. In other words, the COVID-19 pandemic cannot “cause” anyone to feel depressed or anxious.
Depression and anxiety are the world’s oldest cons. When you’re depressed, anxious, or angry, the Negative Thoughts that upset you will not be valid. They’ll be distorted and illogical. Depression and anxiety are the world’s oldest cons. You can see the ten cognitive distortions I first published in my book, Feeling Good, at the bottom of Dan’s Daily Mood Log (link).
You can CHANGE the way you FEEL. The very instant you stop believing your distorted thoughts, your feelings will change. Recovery is not a long, drawn-out process that requires weeks, months, years or decades, as so many people believe, including the majority of mental health professionals. Recovery happens in a flash, an unexpected “ah-ha” moment when your perceptions of the world are suddenly transformed. You will witness such an event in today’s session.
Now let’s see what actually happened!
T = Testing
Take a look at Dan’s Brief Mood Survey (BMS) at the start of the session. He was feeling moderate to severe depression, no suicidal impulses, and just a little anxiety and anger. His Happiness score was quite low, only 7 out of 20, paralleling his depression score of 12, and his satisfaction with his relationship with his wife was a perfect 30 out of 30. He indicated he’d been doing a lot of psychotherapy homework.
This, by the way, is the latest version of the BMS. We’ll ask him to complete it again at the end of the session to see what changes occurred during the session. Because the BMS asks how Dan is feeling “right now,” it’s like an emotional x-ray machine, allowing therapists to see exactly how much, or how little, a patient is changing at every therapy session. The patient’s scores at the start of the next session also allow the therapist to see exactly what happens between sessions in multiple dimensions.
At the end of today’s session, Dan will also fill out the Evaluation of Therapy Session (ETS), and rate Jill and David on Empat
Corona Cast 8: Live Therapy with Dan. How Could You Treat an “Existential Depression” in the Midst of a Pandemic?
Today David and Dr. Jill Levitt feature live work with Dan, a licensed clinical social worker who’s been struggling with an “existential depression” for 15 years, but it has been recently exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The session took place in one hour and forty minutes on a Tuesday evening on July 23rd, 2020, in David’s and Jill’s Tuesday training group at Stanford.
Live personal work is one form of training that is vital to professional growth and learning, so it is extremely beneficial for the person who volunteers for the role of “patient.” At the same time, the live work also provides superb learning for those observing the process, since you can see what is really happening during a T.E.A.M. therapy session. Hopefully, you will learn a great deal as you listen to Dan’s live and uncensored therapy session.
Jill and I feel very grateful to Dan for allowing us to publish such an intensely painful and personal experience. You will likely feel grateful to Dan as well!
All live therapy sessions tend to be dramatic and illuminating from a variety of perspectives. Today’s session is unique in that the A = Assessment of Resistance was outstanding and unique. The remarkable changes that occurred would not have been possible without outstanding E = Empathy and A = Assessment of Resistance, which were stellar.
However, the M = Methods portion of the session was also strong, especially in the use of humor and role-reversals during the Externalization of Voices to blast Dan’s Negative Thoughts out of the water. That portion of the session confirmed by the three basic tenants of cognitive therapy:
You FEEL the way you THINK. All of your negative feelings are caused by your thoughts in the here-and-now, and not by the actual events in your life. In other words, the COVID-19 pandemic cannot “cause” anyone to feel depressed or anxious.
Depression and anxiety are the world’s oldest cons. When you’re depressed, anxious, or angry, the Negative Thoughts that upset you will not be valid. They’ll be distorted and illogical. Depression and anxiety are the world’s oldest cons. You can see the ten cognitive distortions I first published in my book, Feeling Good, at the bottom of Dan’s Daily Mood Log (link).
You can CHANGE the way you FEEL. The very instant you stop believing your distorted thoughts, your feelings will change. Recovery is not a long, drawn-out process that requires weeks, months, years or decades, as so many people believe, including the majority of mental health professionals. Recovery happens in a flash, an unexpected “ah-ha” moment when your perceptions of the world are suddenly transformed. You will witness such an event in today’s session.
Now let’s see what actually happened!
T = Testing
Take a look at Dan’s Brief Mood Survey (BMS) at the start of the session. He was feeling moderate to severe depression, no suicidal impulses, and just a little anxiety and anger. His Happiness score was quite low, only 7 out of 20, paralleling his depression score of 12, and his satisfaction with his relationship with his wife was a perfect 30 out of 30. He indicated he’d been doing a lot of psychotherapy homework.
This, by the way, is the latest version of the BMS. We’ll ask him to complete it again at the end of the session to see what changes occurred during the session. Because the BMS asks how Dan is feeling “right now,” it’s like an emotional x-ray machine, allowing therapists to see exactly how much, or how little, a patient is changing at every therapy session. The patient’s scores at the start of the next session also allow the therapist to see exactly what happens between sessions in multiple dimensions.
At the end of today’s session, Dan will also fill out the Evaluation of Therapy Session (ETS), and rate Jill and David on Empat
2 hr 5 min